


Saving Up

by GretchenSinister



Category: Rise of the Guardians (2012)
Genre: Gen, Pre-Movie
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-19
Updated: 2019-07-19
Packaged: 2020-07-08 07:53:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 807
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19866100
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GretchenSinister/pseuds/GretchenSinister
Summary: Original Prompt: "Anyone else wonder what happened to Jack’s clothing?I’d LOVE to see a take on how Jack gradually goes through time and changes his sense of style, leading up to the blue hoodie.And maybe why he keeps the pants. Like, maybe he tried the bell-bottomed jeans of the 70s but nooope, it was too weird for him. Or he was sad to see the tailored suit of the 40s go.I will love you forever the fashion design major in me is begging you before the next semester starts!"Jack hasn’t changed his clothes very much because he can’t. In this little fill he discovers that, as well as when he is able to, finally.





	Saving Up

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on Tumblr on 5/18/2016.

Jack had tried to stay with the times. He really had. Why he hadn’t been fully successful—well, there were a couple of reasons for that.  
  
When he had first noticed a major change in fashion, he had tried to take a set of new clothes from a clothesline. He didn’t want to steal, but he knew a few places where money that now belonged only to the dead had ended up hidden, and he was pretty sure he could lead the people who had owned the clothes to one of these places after he had taken them.  
  
At first, his plan worked perfectly. The wind blew his chosen clothes off their pins and out over the woods. Jack didn’t let them land until they’d reached a suitably secluded clearing, because even if he was invisible, he wasn’t going to test that while he stripped down and changed into what were, for the moment, stolen clothes.  
  
This, too, went well, but only for a moment. Jack put on the clothes, looked down at himself, was pleased to see that they fit, and then looked up to go and move his old clothes somewhere—maybe someone could use them? They had been much sturdier than any other clothes he had ever heard of; if they retained that property now, they’d be valuable even if they weren’t fashionable. Oddly, though, he didn’t see them where he left them. He turned around in the clearing and finally found, not his old clothes lying on the ground, but the new ones. He looked at himself in alarm, but the clothes weren’t there because they had fallen through him to leave him naked. And maybe he had already known that. He would have felt _that_ ; something else must have happened.  
  
Regardless of what that was, regardless of Jack’s ignorance of what that was, his own clothes were back in place now.  
  
The same thing happened over and over again until Jack had the wind blow the clothes back where they came from.  
  
Years passed, and Jack found again and again that though he could move clothes, he couldn’t wear them—not even over his original clothes. That had been a surprise.  
  
One day, though, he found himself thinking about his clothes, and feeling like he did when he was about to call snow down from the clouds. It was a great feeling, like he could make anything he wanted happen, but he knew, for one, that it really only pertained to snow, and, for another thing, that he didn’t want to bring the first snowfall here, yet. It was cold, but it was still early in the year, and there was still a good amount of harvest work to be done that would be much, much easier with clear ground.  
  
And so he was trying to distract himself, so that he didn’t set the snow falling accidentally, and he was wishing for just a small change in his clothing, like a new clasp for his cloak. He could picture exactly the one he wanted and—when he woke up, he had the new clasp, and felt like he could barely summon a breeze.  
  
And, as it turned out, he couldn’t fly away to let the natural weather reassert itself, and the first snowfall was very, very late in that village that year.  
  
But he had still changed something about his clothes.  
  
He never figured out why it had taken so much out of him to make that little clasp. His only guess was that it had to do with the fact that the clasp stayed with him, and didn’t melt away like everything else he made. It seemed to be the right one, too, as he discovered he could make hats and shoes and gloves and huge, heavy coats of snow and ice for himself, and that was as easy as anything, though they all still melted just like any other snow and ice.  
  
So he started saving up. He didn’t know what it would take for a new outfit, but he knew he wanted one. Maybe even needed one. Wouldn’t it be easier to see him if he looked less like a ghost and more like a boy anyone could see on the street?  
  
But saving up his power took a long, long time. He missed styles he wanted, he missed styles he didn’t want. He missed styles he didn’t understand and ones that he couldn’t believe hadn’t been thought up sooner.  
  
Eventually, though, he managed to make himself a blue, hooded sweatshirt.  
  
It wasn’t exactly what he wanted, but not long after that, enough happened that it didn’t take him so long to save up power anymore, and he didn’t have to try to look ordinary to be seen. And as for making new clothes? Now that—that was fun. 

**Author's Note:**

> Comments from Tumblr:
> 
> bowlingforgerbils said: I like how he has to save up his power for a permanent change. Does that say something about fun, that it’s only fleeting? I can’t believe such an innocent, straight-forward prompt was left unfilled for so long.
> 
> mira-eyeteeth said: Oh jack my poor homeless frost child. This is such a neat concept!


End file.
